What will the Obama administration official say next? If her Tuesday interview with MSNBC offers any answer, it's that Rice appears to shift her story in direct proportion to political pressure.

In her most recent explanation, Rice explained to Andrea Mitchell, that from time to time the correspondence of private citizens would get swept up in legal surveillance of foreign actors. And occasionally when the redacted name of those persons was deemed pertinent to national security, she sometimes requested the "unmasking" of an individual.

"The intelligence community made the determination whether the identity of that U.S. person could be provided to me," Rice said, insisting that she didn't make the call.

While her account of the process might be correct, there's a problem. Two weeks ago during a PBS interview, Rice denied having any knowledge of unmasked information. "I know nothing about this," she told Judy Woodruff. "I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today."

Back then Rice responded to allegations that the Obama administration was surveilling members of Trump's camp for strategic gain by pleading ignorance. Hedging her bets after new reports from Bloomberg and the Daily Caller, Rice now says that any unmasking of identities was "absolutely not for any political purposes, to spy, to expose or anything."

Still, after contradicting her own statements, that distinction will do little to placate Republicans gunning for her head. And she'll find little sympathy after failing to categorically deny that she was responsible for any of the unmasking. Already, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has called for Rice to appear before Congress to testify.

8 comments:

What about all of Hillary's associates that had to be having conversations with the Russian and Chinese ambassadors before the election? I mean if Hillary was a shoo in wouldn't foreign governments have been currying favor with her people? So I'm sure lots of them were "accidentally" surveilled as well as Trump's associates. Why didn't the ever alert and super patriotic Rice unmask Hillary's minions to protect us all from domestic evildoers? Hat tip to Rush, who made just this point today.

It's funny watching these Obama Admin people who are so used to being protected from themselves - by the media and the deep state lifer grools - while they run their play-government and deal out punishment on their enemies from the tired old Alinsky playbook. They've none of them ever had to put much effort into following the law, making sense, etc. Not so smart now when it counts.Goes for Hillary Clinton as well.